It is a truism, but, when
war is declared, truth is the first casualty, as US Senator Hiram Johnson
remarked in 1917. Nevertheless, instilling belief in the cause is vital
if people are going to be persuaded to support military action.

The task in this war on terrorism
is a particularly complex one: not only do people at home need persuading,
but so do the people of Afghanistan, and the Middle East. It takes words,
film, newspaper headlines, radio broadcasts, and food drops. It requires
demonising the enemy, spinning the truth, censoring information, and making
heroes of our forces.

Yet on one front the propaganda war
is being won, easily. Downing Street and the military chiefs have never
had it so good. Almost the only information the press has to go on is supplied
directly from the allied commanders. We are told what they want us to know.
This is the first conflict in the age of satellite TV pictures where no
reporter has been present to witness the bombing.

Instead many journalists are relying
on the government line: data processed by Glasgow University's media monitoring
unit indicates a marked tendency for the early evening news bulletins to
follow the agenda set by Mr Blair and Mr Bush, with a wider range of views
evident on programmes such as Newsnight.

The generals love it. There is no
one to check the veracity of allied briefings, of claims of successful
hits against military installations. What journalists there are on the
ground work for the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television station, and Whitehall
has been doing its utmost in private briefings to rubbish Al-Jazeera as
being naturally biased towards the Taliban/Osama bin Laden cause.

The first night of attacks involved
15 bombers, 25 strike aircraft and 50 sea-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles.
At the following day's briefing the press was told that 85 per cent of
the "ordnance" ( a word beloved of militarists) had hit their targets successfully.
What happened to the other 15 per cent? Assuming that each bomber dropped
one bomb and each aircraft fired one missile that would make more than
13 bombs and missiles that did not reach their intended destination. Where
did they go? Assume that 13 bombs and missiles hit Britain during the night:
what sort of story would that make? But there is just silence.

At times like this, Whitehall, the
military and much of the media become locked in a collective vice-like
grip of "need to know" patriotism. Even to ask such questions, illicits
a sneer .

Anyone who probes too hard, who refuses
to swallow the daily spoonfeeding, is seen as being anti-British. So it
is that we are shown "before and after" pictures of what we are informed
is a Bin Laden training camp, even though Mr bin Laden's camps have almost
certainly been empty for ages.

In the vast military complex that
is the Fort Bragg US Army base in North Carolina, one group of soldiers
stands apart. While their colleagues rehearse helicopter landings and machine-gun
assaults, this lot discuss font types and weights of paper. They are members
of 4th Psychological Operations Group; motto: "Persuade, Change and Influence."
They deluge the Afghan people with leaflets exhorting them to reject the
Taliban and Osama bin Laden.

Meanwhile, Voice of America is broadcasting
to the region, infuriating Taliban leaders who object to reports delivered
in Pashto, listing the options open to them. Now they are having to withstand
their people receiving coalition accounts of the missile attacks.

But hitting waverers in Afghanistan
is just one aspect of the propaganda war. The rest of the Muslim world
is also being targeted, with claims that this is not an assault on their
religion and constant efforts to portray Mr bin Laden as mad, isolated
and self-serving. This front, admit Whitehall sources, is not going so
well. While it was a PR coup having Tony Blair on Al-Jazeera, which previously
carried Mr bin Laden's post-bombing call to arms, it had little effect.
The interview was tougher than expected and Mr Blair's performance was
not his most assured.

Even that did not matter so much
as the sheer immovability of much of his Muslim audience. "Their minds
are made up, this is a war against Islam and little will change that,"
said one source. "For years they have learnt to mistrust their own leaders,
so why should they believe them and their friends now?"

The war planners know the press would
prefer to fill space with eye-witness accounts from the ground. But we
do not have anyone there. Kabul has chosen not to follow Baghdad and Belgrade
and to invite the cameras in. From Whitehall there is a huge sigh of "Thank
God". In those wars, they were struggling to catch up. They bombed an air-raid
shelter in Baghdad. Horrific. They devastated the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
Terrible. Not this time. Now they show us what their "ordnance" has done
– not the other way round. We are given crumbs. By now, hundreds of bombs
and missiles have smashed into Afghanistan, but all we are given is pictures
of the consequences of just a few. Of the rest, not a glimpse.

When trainee officers attend their
courses they spend hour upon hour studying earlier wars and campaigns.
They learn from the mistakes and successes of others. They know, to quote
Marshall McLuhan, that "Vietnam was lost in the living-rooms of America,
not the battlefields of Vietnam". They are not going to make that mistake
in Afghanistan.